Unbreakable

365 Films

Entry #120

Unbreakable (2000)

Directed by M. Night Shayamalan

I suppose the easiest thing in the world to do right now would be to join the dog pile currently in progress on M. Night Shyamalan.  After bursting out of the gate with three consecutive critical and financial successes (in a manner of speaking), Shyamalan has been in a downward spiral ever since wherein each consecutive release appears to out-folly the previous debacle exponentially.  In my personal opinion, it all started to go downhill with Signs and to be brutally honest about it, The Sixth Sense is little more than an “a-ha” Twilight Zone ending in search of a movie.  In my opinion, the filmmaker’s single true unparalleled accomplishment is Unbreakable because it is the only one of his films for which the build-up is almost better than the pay-off.  By beginning the film as a low-key domestic drama with supernatural elements and slowly, piece by piece establishing the film’s true purpose as a comic book origin story and exploration of human heroism, Shayamalan has crafted an unexpectedly tender and mysterious comic book film.  I suppose the key to why the twist in Unbreakable works when so many others of Mr. Shayamalan’s seem to arrive DOA is because it isn’t really much of a twist at all.  The revelation that Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Price is in fact a super villain of astronomical proportions is not so much a twist as an underlining of what is obviously hiding in plain sight the entire time.  The result of which is more the proper period as punctuation to the end of the film rather than an exclamation point.  It doesn’t hurt that the film features some of Jackson’s and Willis’ best work in many a year (and you all know how I feel about Mr. Willis).  It’s a sad reminder of how frequently these two (admittedly) talented actors turn in such lifeless and dull performances.  In point of fact, I don’t think Mr. Jackson once raises his voice to his trademark shouty voice throughout the entire film, someone should tell him to do that more often.  Unbreakable is by no means perfect, then again, I can’t tell if it’s all the collective ill will towards Mr. Shayamalan that has me noticing things like incredibly pretentious pseudo-profound dialogue and character behavior and actions that seem spliced in from not only a different film, but an entirely different genre of film as well.  This is what I call the Michael Bay problem, wherein a director’s latter crimes against humanity seem to manifest themselves in earlier work you initially held dear to you.  I love The Rock, but it’s hard not to cringe at the overtly fetishized idea of the American military or the shot of the Hummer crushing the Hippied-out VW Bug on a San Francisco sidewalk (an image which painfully recalls a similar one in Bad Boys II when a bright yellow Hummer plows through a shanty town in Cuba of all places).  Sorry, I went off on a bit of tangent there but the fact remains that while Unbreakable does have a few awkward patches, it remains to this day a brilliantly cinematic piece of storytelling.  It is a rare film in which the director’s visual prowess is perfectly in sync with the scripted agenda of the piece.  The film is abundant with stunning moments of pure cinema and it’s a shame that Mr. Shayamlan has not been able to recreate the clearly obvious gifts on display here ever since.